I really wish calling this post Necrocomiccon made sense. Punfortunately, it doesn't....

Song of my soul, my voice is 

dead,

Die thou, unsung, as tears 

unshed

Shall dry and die in

    Lost Carcosa.

 "The King in Yellow"

Like a lot of sullen, dorky kids, I first became interested in the occult in my early teens, and the subject interests me to this day....as a sullen, dorky adult.  I've bought a lot of books over the years, but three books I purchased at that heady time really stick out in my memory:  the first three "occult"-related books I bought.  

I might have already read Drawing Down the Moon (Margot Adler, RIP) when I bought these books - I'm not sure - but Adler's book was the first serious study of Wicca I'd read.  Even then I knew the wheat from the chaff.  It seems incredible to me now, but I found Adler's book in my high school library.  I may be wrong, but I'm not sure we'd see it in a public school these days.  Even then, anything vaguely "occult" was hard to find in school libraries, B. Dalton's, or Waldenbooks, the leading bookstores at the time.  This was, after all, the 1980s, and the US was experiencing a moral "Satanic" panic, hysteria that ruined hundreds of good peoples' lives.  QAnon is essentially the same phenomenon, but in this current iteration the "Satanists" have been identified as left-leaning politicians.  In the Middle Ages, it was "the Jooz...."

Let's make a blunt aside:  QAnon is Antisemitism in disguise.

Those early forays into the occult were not the most auspicious, but for me, they were very potent, even dangerous....

• The Magic Power of Witchcraft by Gavin and Yvonne Frost
• The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey
• Necronomicon (the so-called "Simon" version) by ?

I knew - even then - that the Necronomicon ("the" isn't in the title but Lovecraft uses it and it seems awkward without it) was a work of fiction, but I still felt there was something powerful in it; not in the rituals it contained, not in the incantations, but in the very book itself, the object; it was as if it - literally - radiated some kind of measurable power.  Almost like a homing beacon for otherworldly forces.  

Voodoo works because people believe it works.  Voodoo is a kind of gaslighting.  Tell a believer they've been cursed and they will freak out.  I believed some books radiated power, so they did.

40 years and 20+ addresses later, across 4 states and 2 continents, my original copies of The Satanic Bible and the Necronomicon are still with me.  I just recently moved and most of my books got put in boxes. 2 in particular did not.

The Necronomicon fascinates me because although it was an invention of Lovecraft - a fiction - many occultists insist it is based on something "real."  They maintain that although Lovecraft presented his accounts of the tome as fiction, he was speaking of literal eldritch forces and occult traditions.  For these people, the book is dangerous.  I never believed it could summon ancient entities, but I too, for a while, feared the book enough to resist actually opening it until some time after I'd purchased it.  But I was 12 or 13 years old and had a pretty active - and not always healthy - imagination.  From about 8 to 10 years old I couldn't sleep alone.  I'd awake during the night and lie there in a near panic until I got enough courage to run to my sister's room and sleep next to her.  I don't know why; but such was the mind of a kid who a few years later would treat the Necronomicon seriously:  An arguably neurotic child....not a "reasonable" adult....

The idea of the Necronomicon is so alluring that someone actually took the time to write it. This is the "Simon" Necronomicon that I purchased.  Simon is mentioned in the book's introduction as the person who re-discovered the manuscript.  Lovecraft himself claimed that he got the idea from Gothic stories, where "mouldering manuscripts" were often a trope, and he referred to the book throughout his oeuvre.  But the "Simon" version was originally published in 1978, long after Lovecraft's death in 1937.  

Like The Satanic Bible, my copy is an Avon paperback.  The covers are not dissimilar:  nothing except the title and a similar sigil, all white on black.  Necronomicon has a bit of ornamentation, but otherwise the books are both stark, and about the same dimensions all around.

When I first bought the book, I knew it was fiction, and at the time I was barely familiar with Lovecraft.  I mean, come on. The "Mad Arab"?  It was obvious the book was akin to The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, published at the height of Twin Peaks mania.  To expand the fictional universe....and make some coin.  Upon reflection, I find my reaction to the book puzzling;  I knew, or at least strongly suspected, it was fiction, yet on some level I was a bit "frightened" of it.  Maybe even then I was on some level aware of the precepts of chaos magic, that is to say that even fiction can be used effectively in ceremonial "magick."  Fiction or no, I knew it was powerful, because so many of the people I knew who were into the occult spoke of it in hushed tones and seemed to fear it.  It was catching.  It comes back to that comment about voodoo:  it works because people believe it works....

My great hope is that somebody some day will write and even stage The King in Yellow, the play mentioned in several stories of Robert W. Chalmers' eponymous collection.  It is an obvious thing to do: a malevolent play, a shocking diary, an accursed grimoire.  The fame of the stories in which they are found is such that readers are left wanting more, they want to actually read these disturbing things.  Some have suggested Lovecraft was inspired by Chalmers" fictitious play when he invented the Necronomicon, but apparently he did not encounter Chalmers' work until after he had already created his own....

Shadows here of Don Quixote and perhaps one of the inspirations for Foucault's Pendulum....

The Simon Necronomicon is a bit silly, really.  Lovecraft himself knew he could never write something as horrible as the book was said to be.  He knew hints and brief citations were much more effective.  And he was right.  The Simon Necronomicon is just too obviously fabricated to fill the reader with cosmic horror and dread - unless the reader is a 10-year-old neurotic who can't sleep alone....Guilty!  To recreate the power of the fictional book is impossible.  Chalmers wrote a few stanzas of The King in Yellow, but would never have been able to write an entire work with the effect of his fictional play.  The King in Yellow was said to have driven people mad.  It burned through Europe like an epidemic.  A diseased meme.  If he'd written it for real, one would read it, not go mad, and then poof!  The illusion - ruined.

H. P. Lovecraft, quoted by Peter H. Gilmore:

....one can never produce anything even a tenth as terrible and impressive as one can awesomely hint about. If anyone were to try to write the Necronomicon, it would disappoint all those who have shuddered at cryptic references to it.

The Simon Necronomicon is still in print and still sells a fairly decent amount of copies per year.  Most probably bought by newly-minted Lovecraftians.  A novelty for the collection.

Peter Gilmore, Magus of the Church of Satan, wrote an essay about the book which is worth reading.  The book has retained an air of mystery even in this era where almost all information can be accessed 24/7.  The book's true author isn't known for certain, although Gilmore sheds some light on that.

Gilmore also writes that the fact the book is a fiction doesn't make it useless as a magical tool:

Satanists understand that any prop that is sufficiently stimulating can be used in personal ritual, so if the materials contained in this book send the proper chill down your spine, then certainly avail yourself of them. As Magistra Nadramia has said: “Working with and expressing your emotions in the ritual chamber using this particular little black book is perfectly valid Satanic magic. A careful look at The Satanic Bible will tell you that Dr. LaVey encouraged the magician to use any and all elements of fiction, fact and fancy to create his Intellectual Decompression Chamber.

But, he adds:

Just don’t fool yourself outside the ritual chamber into the belief that you are using some authentic ancient tome handed down by Elder Gods to their human, or humanoid, servitors.

This reminds me of chaos magic and the tenet that "belief is a tool."  One can perform bibliomancy with a Bible or Donald Duck cartoons, and have equally valid results.  

Anyway, I stumbled across Gilmore's essay because I was interested in learning a bit more about Gilmore's biography.  I wasn't looking for Necronomicon information at all.  That said, I recently pulled out my copy to look through for the first time in over a decade, and it's sitting on the table next to my laptop.  So, when I clicked on Gilmore's essays and saw he'd written about it, my spider senses tingled.  

For some reason I wrote Nina Simone on a recent collage and then went to the metro after I'd finished collaging for the day; there I noticed a new poster about an upcoming concert in homage to....Nina Simone.  

When it rains it pours.

The coincidence of coming across an essay about a book I'd only just pulled off the bookshelf in over a decade made me think:

 "Drring-drring! Synchronicity calling. Write something."

And here it is. 

Doctor Keldon Shooper presents 'Fun with Flags'

The International Federation of Vexillological Associations

For many years now, I've done posts in which flags figure prominently; these were not really about the flags themselves, but flags as symbols of other ideas.  I've thought the question to myself on many occasions, but I've never written about it: 

"What makes a good flag?"

The study of flags is called vexillology.  The name comes from the Latin vexillum, a square flag carried by Roman cavalry, and -logia; the Greek suffix meaning to study: meteorology, geology, astrology, etc. 

There are several organizations devoted to vexillology, and the most famous vexillologist in recent memory is the fictional Sheldon Cooper, Big Bang Theory genius/autist who did a podcast called "Fun With Flags."  Very "meta."  The running gag is that nobody watched it.  Along with rampant misogyny, the big bangers celebrated geekdom in all it's forms.  I suppose vexillology is one of the geek Hydra's heads.

If my posts are any indication, I'm something of a vexillologist myself.  I also love Sci-Fi.  Hey-ho!  I own three flags:  US, Spanish, and Portuguese.  I don't collect them, I just ended up with them somehow.  I have always coveted a Jolly Roger though....

People get really emotional about flags.  In America there is all manner of etiquette surrounding them: how they're folded (in a triangle), flown (always highest; upside down indicates SOS), stored (folded) and disposed of (ceremonially burned).  Military widows (and widowers) receive them.  If someone burns one in protest, it could lead to a drubbing.  Constitutional amendments have been proposed to make burning one as a protest a federal offense.  The 1st Amendment makes this unfeasible.  Signified trumps signifier?

Flags are important.  Have you seen the Civil War epic, Glory?  At one point in the climactic final battle, the flag-bearer falls.  All becomes chaos, the advance is halted.  Then a soldier picks up the flag, waving and yelling, and the advance continues.  A doomed advance as it turns out, but the importance of the flag, a standard around which men rally, is undeniable.  This is actually based in fact, and flag-bearers were especially significant in the US Civil War (1860-1864). 

Sayeth Wiki:

"...as far back as Roman warfare and medieval warfare the standard-bearer had an important role on the battlefield....the standard-bearer acted as an indicator of where the position of a military unit was, with the bright, colorful standard or flag acting as a strong visual beacon to surrounding soldiers. Soldiers were typically ordered to follow and stay close to the standard or flag in order to maintain unit cohesion, and for a single commander to easily position his troops by only positioning his standard-bearer, typically with the aid of musical cues or loud verbal commands. It was an honorable position carrying a considerable risk, as a standard-bearer would be a major target for the opposing side's troops seeking to capture the standard or pull it down."

So, what makes a good flag?  One supposes being easily seen,  and recognizable, would be important in the context of warfare, but what else?  

What follows are my opinions, some of which leading vexillologists agree with, as it turns out.

Shape-wise, the basic rectangle is best. Flags which are square (Switzerland) or doublet triangles (Nepal), or otherwise tapered and forked (Ohio, Tampa) are rarities for a reason. Nepal's flag works, and Switzerland's does as well.  The shape seems to fit the nature of those countries.  Ohio and Tampa, not so much.  The shape does them no favors, but the colors and design are abominable.  I'm from Tampa, and our flag is, well, a mess.

Switzerland 

Nepal

Ohio

Tampa 

On rare occasions, flags can work with even one color, but this is very rare. Libya's flag was just a green field until 2011.  The black flag of anarchy or the red flag of communism have power because of the ideas behind them.

Two colors can be effective. The Japanese and Bangladeshi flags make it work; they are also very similar in that they have a monochromatic field with a red, stylized sun in (or offset from) the middle. Qatar's flag has always been attractive to me.  A nice maroon color with a serrated white band on the left.

Japan

Bangladesh 

Qatar

Personally, I think three colors work best, although there are some with more that pull it off.

Text should be avoided. Dates or slogans are useful for other parts of the national identity, but the flag is a visual medium of color and basic forms.  It's not a sign.  From a distance, one can't read the text anyway.

Flags should avoid overly-complex images with lots of finicky details.  The aforementioned Japanese sun is a case in point. That said, the smiling sun on Argentina and Uruguay's flags work.  They aren't complex per se, but instead of a circle they have faces.  How cool is that?  I'm not a big fan of the light blue and white color scheme of Argentina, but the sun, a whimsical fellow, makes up for it.

Argentina

Uruguay 

Colors should be in large (-ish) swaths: vertical bands or horizontal stripes are pretty common.  The French flag is simply 3 vertical stripes, and it works.  Better, in my opinion, than Italy's tricolor, which uses green and not blue.  It's not ugly, but just doesn't have the verve of the French.  Russia and the Netherlands also have the same colors as France, but they are horizontal, and to my eye lack the force of the French "Tricolour". 

France

Russian Federation 

The Netherlands 

France's flag is red, white and blue.  Many countries use this color combo: Chile, Cuba, France, the USA, Russia, the Netherlands, Taiwan, etc.  It's a good mix.  Malaysia has a similar flag to the USA. Red and white stripes, blue canton in the upper-left corner.  But where Old Glory has 50 stars, Malaysia has a yellow crescent moon and a single star. It's known as The Stripes of Glory.  The stripes and points on the star represent the states in Malaysia, much like the US flag represents the 13 colonies and 50 states.

Malaysia 

So, I wrote the text above, then Googled the query, "What makes a good flag?" and landed here:

https://www.atlasobscura.com/artlicles/we-asked-a-vexillologist-how-to-design-a-great-national-flag

This article discussed a downloadable booklet called Good Flag, Bad Flag by Ted Kaye:

https://nava.org/digital-library/design/GFBF_English.pdf

The author has 5 basic ground rules:

Flags should be simple, have meaningful symbolism, have no lettering or "busy" seals, have generally no more than three colors, and 5) either be unique....or refer to other flags with some significance for the new one.  

The last rule bears citing an example. Liberia's flag is much like the US flag; it isn't unique, but it references the US flag because the country was founded as a refuge for free blacks or ex-slaves who migrated to Africa from the US.  So, a new flag is either totally unique or integrates elements from the history of its people.

I pretty much picked up on Kaye's rules.  I didn't discuss symbolism and I'm not sure uniqueness is required. Even the author of this pamphlet praises the French flag, which is neither unique in it's design (Italy, Belgium) nor choice of color (Russia, the Netherlands).  Why does France's flag work?  Good question. For me, it just does.

The US flag is simple enough, a bit busy, bit it's a works. Red, white, and blue go well together.  I think Malaysia must have looked to the US, as did Liberia, logically.

Most US state flags are awful, but there a few I like: Alaska, South Carolina, and New Mexico are my top three.  Rounding out a "top ten" would be Indiana, Texas, Tennessee, and since we're aiming for 10, Rhode Island, Louisiana, Maryland for being so crazy, and Arizona.  I actually like the Arizona flag.  It sometimes appears top-heavy, but it is a striking design, unusually-colored, but totally appropriate for the skies and rock formations of the Arizona desert.  That Maryland flag sometimes strikes me as ugly, but it is unique.  Most state flags are boring; so many are basically the state seal on a field of blue.  And with the name of the state writ large, they break all the rules of good flag design.

Maryland

Arizona

New Mexicos 

This guy doesn't mince words in his video. I agree with the gist of his ranking.  My biggest disagreement is his high marks for the Washington state flag.  No offense Washingtonians, but that bust of George is just goofy.  I like the green field but that's about it.  He also places Colorado at number one.  Maybe further reflection will endear me to it, but to be honest, I don't like it.  I can see why people do, but I dunno.  The big C is kind of cheesy.  It's not a bad flag, but I honestly think dropping the C would help.  I'll sleep on it.

There are a few things I wanted to query here. The first is the Principality of Sealand.  Sealand is a micronation consisting of a structure built by the English during WW2.  The current "Prince's" father seized it from pirate radio broadcasters in 1967 and the Prince even repelled an attack by a disgruntled ex-partner and a group of mercenaries in 1978.  Like many of these self-proclaimed nations, they issue currency, stamps and ID cards to collectors.  Apparently, they once had a serious business offer as a secure data-haven.  

Do they have a website? Of course they do.  I think Sealand raises interesting and legitimate questions about what constitutes a nation. And by what right.  Possession being 9/10ths of the law and all that.  Heck, why does the Catholic Church have a state?  Why is the President of France co-prince of Andorra, along with the bishop of Oviedo?  Or some Spanish Bishopric.  Look it up.

From a vexillological point of view, is their flag a success?  I like it, but would like it better if the red and black were of equal proportion.  The Red and the Black.  Perhaps my fondness for Stendahl predisposes me to like it.

The colors are also those of Nazi Germany's flag.  I include it here, along with that of the Confederate States of America, because I think from a design point of view, they are effective flags.  The problem with that assessment is self-evident.  Or should be.  Can we appreciate a flag or a design separately from what it represents?  The Marseillaise, the French national anthem, is rousing.  But it speaks of irrigating French fields with the blood of it's enemies.  

The Nazi flag represents an odious ideology.  Genocidal bigotry.  The Confederate Battle Flag represents the fight to preserve slavery.  I look at them and can't help but think of what they represent.  But part of me has to admit that they are well-designed and follow Kaye's 5 rules.  Perhaps this is why the battle flag persists as a symbol of the South, whereas the actual national flag of the CSA is all but forgotten.

It strikes me that perhaps I've become too amoral trying to be "objective."  Is it normal I can look at the Nazi flag and admire the design?  It's not that I forget what it represents, just that I think it's powerful.  It also occurs to me that the "power" isn't in the design at all, but in the actions performed in its shadow.  There must be some semiotic falderal about signifier and signified to delve into here, but I'm just not that clever.

Ancillary questions:  Can we admire Pound's poetry knowing he was a fascist?  Can we admire Coco Chanel knowing she cavorted with Nazis?  What about H.P. Lovecraft?  He was racist and antisemitic even by the standards of his time.  And Polanski sodomized a 13-year-old with a champagne bottle.  I still enjoy Fearless Vampire Killers....

I don't mean to be flip or dismissive.  I think it's a legitimate aesthetic issue; how much can we separate a design from what it symbolizes?

Thoughts?

Sealand

Nazi Germany

The Confederate States of America 

I know that puts me at odds with many.  I'm not trying to sneak in some nastiness under the guise of vexillology.  It's just a an ethical and aesthetic question I've pondered for a long time.  I wonder what Kaye would say....?

The Random Sun

At the supermarket, stuck for ideas, I asked the woman at the register to give me a random word.  She said "Soleil."  Sun.  The Sun and political imagery came to mind:  Obama's rising sun logo.  The Japanese flag.  The Sun King.

Then I Googled "national flags with the sun".  I knew The Philippines and Argentina would pop up, but I wasn't familiar with Namibia's flag until today.  When I saw it  (adopted, 1990), I was surprised, because the sun in the upper left Canton is a 12-pointed version stylized almost exactly like that of the Taiwanese flag, which I'd seen when looking into the brief life of the Chinese fascist "Blueshirts."  Dig:

The colors are different.  The Taiwanese rays are longer and completely unattached, but the angles at the base of each isosceles ray of the Namibia flag touch slightly.

At first glance they are almost identical.  Both have 12 rays and are set against a blue field.  Curious that they are stylized in such a similar fashion.

I won't recap the 10+ years of sun imagery and metaphor we've discussed here on LoS, but it seems worth discussing the similarities between these two flags. 

According to the Namibia government website:

The sun symbolises life and energy. The golden colour of the sun represents the warmth and the colour of the plains of the Namib Desert.

The blue symbolises the sky, the Atlantic Ocean, Namibia’s marine resources and the importance of rain and water.

Red represents the Namibian people, their heroism and their determination to build a future of equal opportunity for all.

White refers to peace and unity.

The green symbolises the country’s vegetation and agricultural resources.

No reason why there are 12 rays.

On Taiwan's flag....The twelve rays of the white Sun symbolize the twelve months and the twelve traditional shichen (時辰; shíchén), a traditional unit of time which corresponds to two modern hours. Sun Yat-sen added the "Red Earth" to the flag to signify the blood of the revolutionaries who sacrificed themselves in order to overthrow the Qing Dynasty and create the ROC. Together, the three colours of the flag correspond to the Three Principles of the People: Blue represents nationalism and liberty; White represents democracy and equality; and Red represents the people's livelihood and fraternity.

The explanation for the colors, although not exactly the same, is very similar.  I hadn't really noted that Taiwan's flag is red, white, and blue.  Common flag colors:. USA, France, Russia, the Netherlands, Cuba, Chile, the UK....

Other national flags feature the sun: Argentina and Uruguay, the Philippines....here's a complete list.  

We've looked at some flags with single stars and some with constellations.  I don't think we've looked at any with the moon.  I suppose most of these would be the crescent moon of Islam, although South Carolina is an obvious exception 

....

Coming up next, or in short order, anyway.  Sun, stars, constellations, and soon, the moon....

Better Call Sol

Florida Bar photo

Augustus Sol Invictus (born Austin Mitchell Gillespie, 1983), is a Florida lawyer and political candidate who drew attention some years ago when he ran for the U.S. Senate to represent Florida on the Libertarian ticket.  When word got out that he'd once gone to the Mojave Desert and ritually sacrificed a goat, then drank it's blood, he didn't deny it.  No indeed.  He'd been a Thelemite, a loud and proud pagan, and made no bones (nor gristle) about it..

 

But the O.T.O. gave him the (jack?) boot.

Maybe it was the goat.  Maybe it was his hard-right politics.  As a lawyer, he's represented white supremacists, terrorists, and other hard-to-like defendants.  He also was a speaker at the infamous Unite the Right rally, had previously praised eugenics, and promoted white supremacy.  Not to mention he wants to see the world set on fire.  Going through online references to Invictus, he doesn't seem to last very long in any group with which he affiliates.  I don't think a guy like him takes orders very well.  When you read the letter transcribed below, you'll see what I mean.

If it was a clean kill, I have no quarrel with a goat sacrifice; ridiculing it, well, is simply hypocritical.  Muslims and Orthodox Christians do it, Jews did it; heck, some passages in the Talmud depict priests at Solomon's Temple wading up to their knees in blood, and others describe 1.2 million animals being slaughtered on one day.  Certainly hyperbole, but I've read enough to know the courtyard of the Temple was a scene of constant smoke, fire, sizzling fat, and puddles of blood. 

In recent news, Invictus was acquitted in a domestic abuse case (apparently the accuser didn't show).  Charges of stalking, harassment, and domestic violence have been reported to police against him about 10 times.  But in April this year, all charges against him in his latest trial ended up with a "not guilty" verdict.  Read about his legal issues here.

There are already some good articles about Invictus online; this one is especially good at situating Invictus within the current fascist spectrum and is much defter than my attempts in recent posts.  It focuses on the idea of "Imperium" articulated by Francis Yockey.  I was really struck by this passage:

Fascism’s key....is syncretic, mixing in aspects of the left to create a shifting, yet totalizing, political system. Libertarianism....has the unique ability to mainstream far-right positions, and really to be the only crossover point that organizations with hard-right politics would normally have. Invictus himself seems to maintain very common talking points from the Libertarian Party, but mixes them with a sort of social commentary about the need for dominant leaders, a “cult of violence,” and the need to return to the idea of Imperium....he seems to portray a frenetic and confused political menu that focuses on strength and power and keeps a great deal of open fascist ideals just under the surface.

A second article by the same author is also instructive.  The writer, Shane Burley, is clearly not sympathetic to Invictus' views, but he manages to keep it fair; in fact, this second article is a response to a letter Invictus wrote to Burley, thanking him for the first article, which focuses on his ideas, rather than the sensational "Goat-blood drinking Florida Man" angle of most other articles about him.

From that second article, I'd also like to quote a paragraph that goes into something my previous posts have addressed:  the meeting of left and right:

One thing that did stick from Yockey, and we are seeing today in many sides of the New Right, is a call for unity between the Right and Left. Yockey called for a "red-brown alliance," which would be the association between fascists and anti-Zionist communists (since he saw the Jews as essentially the primary problem), and this has been much of the discussion of a Third Positionism that sees both capitalism and communism as problematic. Today, we see this incredibly present in National Anarchism, National Revolution, and National Bolshevism, as well as various strains of racialist Asatru/Odinism and parts of the Alt Right. It should be noted that they do not borrow from the Left in terms of underlining ideas, but just in tactical notions like opposition to capitalism and support of deep environmentalism.

National Bolshevism.  Asatru/Odinism.  Deep environmentalism.  Left/right unity.  Almost like a list of keywords for my recent posts....I've addressed each and every one of these topics in the last 12 months.  

 

The letter I reproduce below has been widely discussed online. I only post it now because I got a call last week from a friend I hadn't seen in 30 years.  "I'm in Marseilles!"  Next day we're in Toulouse eating Camembert and I tell her about my recent forays into occultism and fascism.  And she asks, "Have you ever heard of Augustus Sol Invictus?  Cuz I went to school with him."  

 

Coincidence much?  I'm writing posts about the occult and avant-garde roots of fascism, and a woman I haven't seen in 30 years pops in from across the Atlantic to tell me she went to grad school with the contemporary personification of the occultist/artist/fascist idea I've been recently manhandling.  Oh yeah, Invictus writes poetry with titles like All is burning: it is the end and Set the World on Fire.

From the time of his religious renunciation and departure to the wilderness to the time of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and its aftermath, Invictus discusses his first-hand experience of the brutal world of radical politics, including the public betrayals and catastrophes and the private heartbreaks and changes in course.

 

This friend of mine was in a class with Invictus as a grad student and describes him as a friend (at the time, anyway) and a decent guy.  But he hadn't yet revealed his fascist beliefs, and domestic violence wasn't probably something they yukked about over sandwiches.  My friend is quite a feminist, she wouldn't truck with no violent misogynists.  

She describes him as seeming "lost" and "in search of an identity."  She emphasizes that Gillespie made sure to legally change his name before getting his diplomas, so that they carried his new name. Becoming Invictus was becoming a new person.  She feels that the person before and after were truly like different people.

Some time later, in 2013, my friend received Invictus' famous "renunciation" letter, which I present here.  It was originally sent to his colleagues at DePaul University College of Law  (a Catholic school, BTW) and he sent to my friend as well.

(Update 13/07: Hey.  I just re-read the article about Augustus.  The letter that I shared with you was originally sent to our cohort & the professors at Rollins College Crummer School of Business....He sent a different letter to DePaul....When my Rollins cohort received our letter, the other people on our team dug around and found that letter that he wrote to DePaul on a DePaul message board.)

 

When that email arrived 2 days before finals, the school was so fearful of a mass shooting episode that students were allowed to do their finals from home.  The grad program was effectively shut down for three days.  Young Invictus even received a visit from the FBI.

 

The first page of the scan is blurry but you can read the transcript below.  I don't feel this is a violation of Invictus' privacy.  He sent it to his entire cohort and every professor in the program; and it's reproduced online already.  He clearly meant it to be a public declaration.  And the guy may run for office again one day.  Domestic violence?  Shit.  The GOP will excuse sex offenders.  Sacrificed goats?  No worries.   

 

Remember a few years back, "I am not a witch...."  

 

As NPR said of Christine O'Donnell's ad in 2010:  "It should go without saying that if in your first TV ad as a candidate for the U.S. Senate you feel compelled to announce: "I am not a witch," you're in deep trouble."

Whoooo-ooo-ooo!  (That's a ghost noise BTW).  Cue rattling chains!

 

According to a recent video (2022) Invictus posted on YouTube, he's once again Catholic. Tridentine (Pre-Vatican II), naturally.

So, here's that letter.  It must be intended to be ironic to a certain degree, no?  A "winning handshake"?  What?  No discussion of the paper stock of his business cards?  Is this Sol Invictus, or Patrick Bateman?  (Bateman: "This Confession Has Meant Nothing.")

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Sent: Sat, Apr 20, 2013 1:01 pm

Subject: FW: On My Renunciation & Departure from Civilization

To the Grey World of Man:

 

They say that only failures become revolutionaries; that those who perpetrate violence in the name of a great cause only do so because they have failed at everything else in life. In other words, they only become revolutionaries because they have achieved nothing of value in the “real” world.

Witness ye the glory of my life at 29 years of age: I have four children, each of whom should be the envy of every parent in the world; I have attained a Baccalaureate Degree in Philosophy with honors; I have attained a Doctorate in Law, cum laude; I have acquired licenses in the profession of law in the States of New York, Illinois, and Florida; I am scheduled to acquire two more such licenses in North Carolina & Massachusetts; I am Editor-in-Chief of a poetry journal; I run an independent publishing company; I have opened my own law office in downtown Orlando; I am an MBA candidate; and I have accomplished a few other things that will remain off the record for now.

 

I am of genius intellect & cultured, well-educated & creative, well-mannered & refined. I am God’s gift to humankind where the English language is concerned, and I also happen to have a basic knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian. I am musical & artistic; I am athletic & possessed of militant self-discipline; and I am many other things. I have a Cadillac & a poodle, multiple computers & a personal library; I live in an apartment downtown, right across the street from the courthouse; I have been to Paris & Vancouver, to Cairo & Dubrovnik, to Mexico City & Siracusa. I dress better than all of you, pronounce my words perfectly, and have a winning, professional handshake. I am everything you ever wanted to be.

 

I challenge any of you, then, to accuse me of being a failure in this artificial civilization of yours. For it is beyond dispute that I have played your petty game, and I have won.

 

But your game no longer holds any interest for me. Your architecture is vapid & worthless, as is your decadent culture, the mindless drivel you call music, the filth you call democracy. You waste your lives watching pure excrement on television, shopping at the strip malls, planning your vacations to resorts & theme parks. The Internet, with its infinitude of information, is used for reading celebrity gossip & watching sitcoms. You have begun to reduce argument to memes & human communication to trite sound bites. Life has become trivial – and if you cannot feel the human spirit decaying, you are already dead.

 

As for those in the profession of law: The vast majority of you are nothing more than parasites. The only reason you eat, the only reason you can afford to have roofs over your heads, is that the lives of others have been ruined by the very laws & social order you claim to be legitimate. You feed off others like worms, and were this world & their lives just & in order, you would be out of work. Look upon your lives, and repent.

 

This modern civilization of which you are all so fond deserves naught from me but the violence of my contempt; and if you were strong enough, you would hold the same contempt & turn your torches upon the world as I shall.

 

WITNESS YE MY RENUNCIATION:

 

I hereby renounce my licenses to practice law, my diplomas, my affiliation with Rollins, DePaul, and the University of South Florida, my United States citizenship, my membership in the Roman Catholic Church, my law firm, my publishing company & poetry journal, and all of my material possessions.

 

To those who believe that this great renunciation is evidence of mental illness rather than the initiation of a spiritual journey: If my example stirs nothing in you, if you can see no further than the confines of what your secular humanism & its hallowed psychiatry allow, then there is nothing I can say to you that would wake you from your slumber. You are less than the beast in man. You are fungi. Would to God that you pass quickly from this Earth.

 

HEAR YE MY FINAL WORDS IN PEACETIME:

 

I have prophesied for years that I was born for a Great War; that if I did not witness the coming of the Second American Civil War I would begin it myself. Mark well: That day is fast coming upon you. On the New Moon of May, I shall disappear into the Wilderness. I will return bearing Revolution, or I will not return at all.

 

War Be unto the Ends of the Earth.

Augustus Sol Invictus

Orlando, Florida, USA

XX Aprilis MMXIII Satvrnvs

 

 

 

Fnord.  Hail Eris.

You really could Nazi these coming....

Kenyatta National Hospital, Nairobi

In a recent post we discussed swastikas made from trees, among other arboreal and geoglyphical curiosities, which can only be seen from the air or from afar.  

LoS originally wrote about a related topic in 2007, after a minor kerfuffle over a swastika-shaped barracks and the 600K spent to cover it up.  A later post addressed a similar controversy about a retirement home in Alabama.  A million dollars had already been spent in 2001 to add extensions to hide that fylfot.

 

I won't go into details about each of them, but Web Urbanist has compiled a list of 9 swastika-shaped buildings now easily-seen via Google Earth, from a low-flying Cessna, or if you're a perceptive pelican (Crossed Up: 9 Twisted Swastika-Shaped Buildings).

We launch satellites into orbit so we can communicate globally, find our way on unfamiliar roads, predict the weather, see the cosmos, and spot Nazis from the sky.

Some of the "swastikas" in the Web Urbanist list are a bit of a stretch, but some of them really pop right out atcha.  As the article says: 

The swastika-shaped buildings described above have nothing whatsoever to do with Nazism, they’re merely “unfortunate architectural coincidences"....

Or so they would have you believe.  

As Richard Hoagland "proves" in Dark Mission, the Nazis and Freemasons running NASA planned moon missions to correspond with Masonic and Nazi numerological symbolism.  You don't think they'd know that one day we'd be able to see those buildings from space?

Wesley Acres Methodist retirement home

Remember that Alabama retirement home mentioned above?  Near Huntsville, Alabama, home of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center?  Where, after WW2, the US repatriated a whole passel of Nazi engineers to help develop America's nascent space program?

A retirement home that some claim housed many of those same Nazi rocket scientists in their dotage?

Coincidence?  You can Nazi them from the ground, but from the Iron Sky, Sieg Heil, y'all.

The Battle of the Battle of Liberty Place

White League propaganda. These are the fellows honored by the Battle monument.... (Wikimedia Commons)

When the Battle of Liberty Place monument, a memorial honoring those who died in an attempt to overthrow the city government after the Civil War, came down two weeks ago, contractors did the work in the middle of the night wearing kevlar and face masks.

WaPo: Tensions rise....

8/16:  I wrote the following in January.  While I think what I originally wrote is more nuanced, honest and well-meaning than what I've heard from various "unite the right" types in Charlottesville, I'm bummed to hear some of the same things I wrote coming out of those hate-twisted mouths (that Vice video for example).  Unlike the POTUS, I will not hesitate nor mitigate, I thoroughly repudiate those neo-Nazi über-trolls, and any similar arguments are coming from and heading towards an entirely different place than those dudes'....

It irks me a bit that this article conveys the message that everybody against removing Confederate memorials are either racists and/or apologists for slavery.  Camo-clad, pistol-packin', Trump-lovin', flag-wavin' good ole boys sittin' on the porch with a moon-pie in one hand and a Mason jar of RC Cola in the other.  That said, take a good look at that cartoon.  One would hope that the Liberty Place monument's defenders are ignorant of exactly what it was they are defending when it comes to this particular chicken-fried obelisk.  Sadly, I can't escape the fact that many of them know exactly what it means.  David Duke certainly did when he tried to hold a rally there.  And I'd bet the phoned-in threats that made spiriting it away like thieves in the night a necessity weren't made by kindly old ladies dividing their Golden Years between the Daughters of the Confederacy and the flower-arranging club.

I think that somehow contextualizing these kinds of monuments would be better than just taking them away in the dead of night.  Are we eventually going to take down any memorial to the Confederate war dead?  If you look at the history behind the Liberty Place monument, and the literal white supremacist messages inscribed upon it, it's hard to lament its removal.  But its presence at least reminded people of the events which it honored, and those are events worth remembering.  I would suggest a kind of counter monument that incorporated the original, a way to re-interpret both the event itself and the earlier monument that sought to glorify it.  Becoming a kind of monument about a monument.  A meta-monument.  Or shit, just take it down and put it in a museum.  But doesn't stealing it away under cover of darkness send a message of fear, or give the impression that there's more support for it than there actually is?

It's like the KKK gravestone in Deland, Florida I've written about.  It would be a forgotten bit of local folklore if removed.  As it is, the stone radiates a kind of forlorn air, covered as it is with the stains of piss and beer bottles, perhaps other effluvia.  It reeks of defeat.  At worst, neglected; at best, covered with marks of loathing for what it represents, pooh stains on a white sheet.  The dank drapery of a defunct douche-bag.  But trying to erase history is always a bad move.  That grave inspired a lot of research on my part, edging me me towards investigating many facets of African-American history I might not otherwise have been motivated to learn about.  I felt I had to counteract a monument to the despicable.

Some kind of interpretive stelae for the Liberty Place monument may have been more powerful than a midnight removal.  Imagine coming across a glorious obelisk and then learning it carried blatant messages of white supremacy and sought to honor a white supremacist army?  A good number of people would check it out, learn something about how the end of the Civil War didn't necessarily mean the end of racial bloodshed and armed civil strife.  About how the League operated in the open, explicitly agitating for the overthrow of the Reconstructionist government and then trying to make it happen through intimidation, murder and in Liberty Place, armed insurrection.  And where they failed in violence, they succeeded through democracy.  Democrats regained control of the state legislature in 1876, two years later.

So now they're preparing the removal of statues to Generals Lee and Beauregard and President Jefferson Davis, and the situation is fraught with tension, primed for some kind of violent reaction.  Interesting story.  I wrote about the decision to remove the statues back in 2016 and had some more cogent comments.  As a historian, I'm simply loathe to cover up the past, no matter how loathsome.  Although I'm not really torn up about it, I do think it would be a shame if the next targets are monuments to Confederate war dead.  People should be able to honor their ancestors.  I know, why would I bother to defend these people?  I just don't "get it".  I do get it, but this kind of controversy doesn't do nuance very well.  Some of those soldiers were despicable men, but many of the grunts were just kids, protecting their lands and their sovereignty.  Call me naive, but I've always been in the "better to let ten guilty men go free than convict once innocent man" camp.  One of the pitfalls of actually believing in the ideals of the Founding Fathers.  Beauregard and Lee I could care less about.  History will remember them.  But who will remember those poor young dudes they led to the slaughter?

In any event, the people have spoken, the monuments will fall.  I really do hope they do something though, to explain the story of Liberty Place.  That was pretty messed up.  The White League that initiated the insurrection was a nasty bunch.  The whole business had started in 1872 over a disputed election and had already led to one conflict, or massacre, at Colfax, where 150 freedmen were killed by a white militia.  At least 50 of them had been killed after having been taken prisoner.  These were not the gallant warriors of myth, and many of these militiamen were part of the White League that later tried to capture New Orleans, and succeeded, until Federal troops moved in and ousted them.  No one was ever prosecuted.  The 1891 monument interpreted the ensuing events in order to honor the insurrectionists and in 1932 the city added an inscription stating that the election of 1876 vindicated the insurrectionists, recognizing white supremacy in the South.  No tears here to see it go, but mightn't it have served a better role as a kind of elaborate public urinal?

If the vow to set these statues in a museum is honored, I think the public would be better served than placing them in secret warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant and the alien cadaver.  The monument is a powerful shock to our modern sensibilities, which is a good sign that times have changed.  That they had to take such extraordinary precautions to remove it shows just how much times haven't.

So I guess this is a contradictory mass of feelings about the issue after all.  Many people want them removed and I think I want them to stay for the very same reasons.  A question, then, not of the goal, but of the strategy on how to attain it.  Or maybe not.  I don't want people to forget this stuff.  I want them to remember....